Yet again more working journalists have been man-handled and arrested by Barbados police thugs. The crime this time was reporting on a police officer who is charged with dealing drugs. (Nation News stories here,here and here)

Commissioner Dottin has once again promised to have some sort of investigation or inquiry into the incident – the same as he always promises whenever the police shoot an unarmed citizen in the back of the head or beat up working reporters. Of course, there never is any investigation or explanation by Dottin or the Royal Barbados Police Force because the police are above the law in Barbados. They answer to no one, not even to the politicians and certainly not to concerned citizens or the victims of police abuse. Dottin always says he will “Look into it” whenever an unarmed civilian is shot or a reporter is roughed up – but then nothing happens and the years go by.

We know that Barbados police are paid a fraction of what is paid to professional police officers in many other Caribbean nations. We know that they are poorly trained because of lack of funding, and understrength because of a shortage of qualified recruits. The last government’s solution to the problem was not to pay the police a living wage, but to lower the hiring standards!

All that is true, but in the end the police must be professionals and adhere to the rule of law whether they believe they are being paid enough or not.

And that makes it is a top-down leadership problem with the responsibility falling upon Commissioner Dottin – who has failed miserably to make the police into a professional law enforcement organisation where officers adhere to the rule of law and believe themselves to be guardians of a sacred trust to protect society.

Commissioner Dottin has shown time and time again that he is incapable of controlling his officers, let alone making the Royal Barbados Police Force into a professional law enforcement organisation that we can all be proud of.

My neighbour’s mother got rushed into hospital last week, there was however no rush for treatment when she arrived there. She had a suspected stroke, there were seemingly only 2 doctors on duty, that’s what her daughter was told by the nurse. Believe it or not she had to wait an unbelievable 6 hours until a doctor came to see her.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is only a notch above what you would get in a third world country, I personally think that the people of Barbados deserve a hell of a lot better.